One of the enduring myths of the working world is that there is a correlation between waking up early and productivity. This particular form of insanity is left over from the days pre-electrification, when to make the most out of a day you needed to make the most of the sunlight. (The face-slapping irony of this is that if you work in an office, maximizing your time working during sunlit hours often means you see a minimum of the sun.)
An article in today's (5/14/04) Wall Street Journal sums it up well (can't link — it's for paying subscribers only, I'll have to quote):
Of all the gulfs in understanding at the office, among the most difficult to bridge is that between morning and night people. On the one hand, think bushy-tailed company lawyers who eat lunch at 11 a.m. On the other, consider the bleary-eyed techies for whom the only thing as bad as waking up early is the people who enjoy it so loudly.
The conflict between the morning larks and the night owls would be the office equivalent of the Bloods versus the Crips if, at any given time, one gang weren't so pooped.But we're not talking about a fair fight here. The 9-to-5 shift overwhelmingly favors larks. When has anyone complained that employees show up too early? Owls, on the other hand, are frequently stigmatized as recalcitrant slugabeds who fritter time and resources on the company's dime.
That stigma is just another sign that shallow emblems of productivity impress American managers more than results. After all, the 9-to-5 shift has become an anachronism in the 24-hour global economy. It fails to take into account the impact of e-mail and other technologies in making traditional work hours less relevant.
It also ignores biology. High schools and colleges have finally woken up to that fact, increasingly delaying the beginning of classes to better suit the biological clocks of students whose sleep cycles naturally slip later into the night. "It is absolutely crazy to expect high-school and college students to learn things at 7 a.m.," says Timothy Monk, director of the Human Chronobiology Research Program at the University of Pittsburgh.
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Article comments
1 - Mark Saleski
oh yes...morning people can be tough to deal with. i should know. my wife teaches school and is up every day at 5 am.
i'm something of a night owl (most of my writing happens then) and wake up with a huge mental anvil on my head.
this can lead to comical scenes at the breakfast table....i'll often get up to have coffee with her at 6am. she's going full guns by then while i'm sitting there with eyes squinting, comtemplating just how difficult it'll be to lift that coffee cup.
2 - Chris
Don't disparage the early rising lawyers. For some reason, Courts like to start the day at the ungodly hour of 8 a.m and generally close for business around 5 p.m.
Plus, lawyers are still the breed that only makes a living based on the amount of time they spend on a matter. This generally means having to get in the office early to do some real work before the phone starts ringing, client meetings, associate bullshitting, and generally having to pry work from partners hands. Sometimes it requires being in the office for 10-12 hours to be able to bill 6-8 hours and make a living.
Ahhh . . . the life of an associate.
3 - Mac Diva
I think there is something to the theory. I'm also glad to hear schools are becoming aware of the early bird mythology. I had Property at 8 a.m. when I was in law school. I've always wondered if that is why my lowest grade was in that class. I was usually there, but in body mainly.
I don't know if the natural non-early riser can really change. Yes, I was at the law firms by nine. But, my most productive thinking and writing occurred in the afternoon. So, though the billable hour forms may have read worked on X case for 30 minutes at 11 a.m., that was misleading.